


After Checkmate

by downdeepinside



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brief Description of Torture, Drugs, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Instability, Mostly S3 Compliant, PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3366500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downdeepinside/pseuds/downdeepinside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate." - Isaac Asimov.</p><p>After Serbia Sherlock doesn't cope so well. Of course he fucking doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hoping to wrap this up by Tuesday, three or four chapters. Thank you! Sorry it's short.

He closes his eyes, and he sees Serbia.

Serbia was dark, and the basement a cruder author might have called his home for six months always smelt of mould and smoke. He knows this, and yet when he closes his eyes that isn’t how he sees it. His memories are no longer his own.

His basement had been dark and damp, yet when he closes his eyes the lights are on, a gentle but persistent glow from the bulbs hanging loosely overhead. The walls are pristine white and baby blue rather than grey and peeling, and the smell is the biggest lie of them all. Instead of burnt, rotten flesh, or copper blood, or tangy sweat, all he smells is that fresh post-rain scent. His nightmare smells like spring.

The torture isn’t different – not really. Perhaps the flick of the whip stings a little less, or the sizzle of his skin under the burning cigarettes aches more than sears, but essentially it’s always the same. Action, reaction. Pain, pain, pain.

***

“How are you?”

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“Sherlock –”

“I’m fine.”

***

The drugs help at first, the morphine always a cure for pain now a quick way to numb himself to everything else. Unfortunately, like everything else, the drugs let him down.

The needle turns on him. As his mind palace turns to dust – to breadcrumbs – before his very eyes the cool embrace of morphine turns frigid: an iron maiden’s comfort.

When Molly slaps him his mind skips back through memories like a broken record. Serbia, snow, ice and scars. He almost thanks her for giving him something real, tangible pain that he can, for a moment, cling to. He stills his tongue but later, as he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, he pinches his wrist hard and twists. Maybe Molly was right. Maybe he just needs to feel something, something else.

John look so angry and Mary so – blank

In another life time he’d have cared to investigate the new Mrs Watson, but not now.

Not after Serbia.

***

“Talk to me.”

Closed eyes. A slight shake of the head.

“I’m sorry.”

***

When he shoots Magnusson his mind fractures, a hundred thoughts at once, a hundred different possibilities. In the north wing of his palace there are cries that it should have been him, should have been him hitting the floor, while in the south he hear whispers taunting him. Contrary to popular belief, Charles Magnusson is the first life he has taken. For months he was held in a dank basement inhaling the scent of his own marred flesh, and still Charles is the first he can kill.

In the east there’s stunned silence as the realisation that Sherlock just killed a man hits home and, in the west, there’s Serbia.

He tries to shut his palace down, tries to focus on the whirr or the helicopter overhead and the sound of John screaming his name behind him. He tried, and fails.

He closes his eyes.

He sees Serbia.

***

“This can’t continue, Sherlock. Please.”

No reply.

“Just – tell me you’re okay. Please, Sherlock. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

***

They find him on the plane, a puddle of a man hiding behind a soft leather seat. The plane is white and blue, and although it doesn’t smell like rain it might as well. He doesn’t need to close his eyes now.

Mycroft runs through the door when he receives a text informing him his brother appears to be missing from the plane, and in another life it would have been funny. As the older Holmes stops over Sherlock and looks down at his younger brother in pity it occurs to Sherlock he should be embarrassed. He isn’t, but it’s nice to think of before. Before, when his back was clean and he still had his pride.

The lines carved by cruel cigarettes and wretched whips have healed now. Why do they still hurt?

Distantly, he can hear John. He can hear desperate cries for help but he knows they’re not his. He never cried for help, no matter what they did.

There are kind eyes fixed on his but it smells like spring and he hurts.

He closes his eyes. He sees Serbia.


	2. Chapter 2

“I brought tea.”

“Congratulations.”

“Words today, huh? That’s new. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

***

Two weeks after the plane there are cases, and wile chases, and no one looks at Sherlock like he’s going to break in two so it’s all just great. Brilliant, in fact. He feels brilliant.

Cigarettes and coke have been swapped for coffee, lots of it. Sherlock has decided he’d rather die of exhaustion than boredom. So what if his trips to the mind palace are fleeting these days? So what if any sleep is short lived and overly medicated? He’s coping, and that’s what matters. Right?

John visits more now, when he supposes might be a good thing. He’s not sure what it says about the state of his bachelor’s marriage, but between cases and companions he rarely has a moment to close his eyes. He thinks the change of season might help, as well. Nearly a whole year until he’ll have to cope with the smell of spring again.

Things are great. Really, really great.

***

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

It’s his turn for silence, now.

***

He’s lying on John’s kitchen table, his head cushioned in his folded arms and eyes closed in tired bliss. The army doctor is stitching up a slash by Sherlock’s hip, a refreshing sting that Sherlock doesn’t think he’ll remember tomorrow, and as the doctor moves to push up Sherlock’s shirt he doesn’t even think to protest.

John’s heavy exhale reveals the scars littering Sherlock’s back have not gone unnoticed. Sherlock feels like he should feel upset to have his injuries laid out on a table like this, but to be honest he’s too busy wondering what John’s reaction will be.

In the end, he doesn’t react much past the huff of breath.

He sends Sherlock home with a box of pain killers and instructions to avoid lengthy showers. Sherlock decides this means he can skip showers for the next few days.

***

“I should have seen it, it’s not like you were trying particularly hard to hide it. I should have known.”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh, shut up.”

***

Mary dies, and that’s not great. John looks increasingly tired every day and Sherlock doesn’t know whether to offer him coffee or benzodiazepines. In the end he doesn’t offer either.

Eventually John moves back into 221B and if he’s surprised that Sherlock’s moved into his old bedroom he doesn’t show it. He happily moves into Sherlock’s old room and leaves the detective in the upstairs room, with only one point of entry and several hiding places. Sherlock knows it’s ridiculous, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

Every morning John greets Sherlock with a warm cup of tea and a polite enquiry into his wellbeing, and every morning Sherlock says he’s fine because it’s not his wife that just died, is it?

***

“I think you should see someone. A professional.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“You know I’m not that sort of a doctor.”

***

In the end, when everything falls apart, it takes Sherlock entirely by surprise. 


	3. Chapter 3

There’s a chase, as always, and Sherlock thrills to know that John is on his heels just like the old days. Just like before. The culprit slams Sherlock into a wall in an effort to escape, and although the hard slap of his skin against the rough surface causes Sherlock’s old injuries to burn up a little the thrill of another murder solved and the exhaustion of five days without sleep are keeping him sufficiently buzzed. He ignores the storm clouds gathering over his palace.

John giggles a little as Lestrade slaps handcuffs on the dark eyed criminal and Sherlock smiles at the feel of John’s shoulder brushing his. As they make their way home for take away and sleep Sherlock’s nerves sing in a way they haven’t in a while, in a way the coffee and the morphine never could.

It isn’t until Sherlock stumbles a little pushing the key through the lock, and John pulls in a quick breath through his lips that things start to falter ever so slightly. The consulting detective tilts his head and finds his doctor a little closer than expected; blue eyes focused not on his, but instead slightly lower. Sherlock frowns and John licks his lips before taking a small step forward. His breathe is cool on Sherlock’s skin.

“Tell me no,” he says, and Sherlock stays silent.

***

“John?”

“Sherlock.”

“Help?”

***

Soft, plump lips press lightly against his and Sherlock’s world flips upside-down momentarily. He gasps for air and staggers back slightly, only to immediately fall forward again seeking further contact. John hums contentedly into what is really only a chaste press of lips and Sherlock absolutely doesn’t whimper, before fisting his hands into John’s shirt.

A tongue gently prise into Sherlock’s mouth and he lets it, allowing his eyes to fall shut as John takes total control, pushing the detective gently up against a wall.

***

“Fuck,” John falls down onto the sofa, next to where Sherlock is curled up in a miserable ball wearing the same clothes he pulled on a week and a half ago. “Fuck, Sherlock, of course. Of course I’ll help you.”

Sherlock closes his eyes again and rests his head on the sticky leather cushion. “Alright,” he murmurs, then pauses, “Thank you?”

John reaches out to give Sherlock’s ankle a gentle squeeze, before thinking better of it and instead laying his hand on the sofa, within touching distance should Sherlock desire the contact. “You’re welcome.”

***

Sherlock’s back is still sore from earlier, and as John presses him up against the wall old injuries strain against his silk shirt. The detective releases his grasp on John in surprise and the doctor takes the opportunity to lightly wrap his hands around Sherlock’s wrists. Sherlock smells spring even though it’s pushing autumn.

Sherlock whimpers again, a different kind this time, and John smiles as he tightens his hold on slender wrists a little and pushes up against a trapped Sherlock. That’s all it takes.

Sherlock is back in the basement, sweat dripping down his hairline for a very different reason and crueller shackles cutting into the soft skin of his wrists. Rough lips press against his and sinister words are snarled at him in Serbian. Flashes of white flicker through his vision, and then his knees give in.

***

“You’ve had me worried, you know,” John sighs when it becomes apparent Sherlock isn’t going to speak again. “Nearly twelve days of silence after your – after that.” He tries for a smile that feels more like a crack in tired paint work, “Thought I might’ve lost you.”

Sherlock blinks his eyes lazily and fixes his gaze on a sharp corner of the mantelpiece. He frowns and rolls onto his back. “Misplaced, maybe.” He considers, “Not lost. You’d never lose me.”

John worries his bottom lip and focuses anywhere but at the broken man besides him.

***

His backside hits the warm pavement and his hands fall loose as John drops them in surprise. He pulls his knees up to his chest to act as a barrier between him and the rest of the world, one he wasn’t allowed back then. A hand finds its way into his dark curls and tugs, hard, as if trying to pull the thoughts of baby blue basements and strawberry scented cigarettes out. If his memories are wrong how is he ever meant to delete them? It’s as if they’re encrypted files, stored in gibberish and so difficult to identify. A patchwork quilt of the real and the not-real designed to spread out through his entire being until he is nothing but this. Pain, torture, and awesome confusion.

The basement wasn’t blue, and John’s tongue isn’t well versed in Serbian. London is warm in a way his winter snow was not, and yet.

He closes his eyes, he sees Serbia.

He opens them, he sees hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping to add another short fic as an accompaniment to this one - most probably John's perspective of both during and after events in this story. I deliberately left a few ends untied so I can slip in a sequel. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and comments would be appreciated since this was a really rough writing exercise for me compared to my normal semi-planned approach.


End file.
